small architecture, BIG LANDSCAPES

January 24 – March 11, 2011

Curated by Wes Janz, Professor of Architecture at Ball State University

One billion leftover people— typically called squatters or self-builders or homeless (it’s a big category)— claim leftover spaces in cities and live in unauthorized dwellings made of scavenged, leftover materials. That’s 1 in 6 people worldwide. By 2025, two billion people globally, or 1 in 4, will be slum dwellers; by 2050, 3 billion people will live in slums or 1 out of every 3.

If you know just one of the one billion, you’ve been touched by her or his life, even if briefly and reluctantly.

What can be learned from those we consider to be the most disadvantaged?

Each of the works in this exhibition is a beginning point for rethinking our attitudes about who and what we typically see as having no value while suggesting that our leftover human beings, building materials, and spaces can be seen— must be seen— as someone or something with potential.

Wes Janz, PhD, RA is the founder of onesmallproject. He is a Professor of Architecture at Ball State University where, in 2006, he was the recipient of the university’s Outstanding Teaching Award. In 2008 he was a finalist for the Curry Stone Design Prize, which is awarded to breakthrough projects that have the “power and potential to improve our lives and the world we live in.” He is the only U.S.-based finalist and the only full-time educator to be recognized in the three years of the Curry Stone prize. In recent years, Wes has traveled to Argentina, China, Finland, India, Panama, Russia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, and Uruguay, as well as a dozen cities of the U.S. Rust Belt. Along the way, he’s shifted from a curiosity in the power held by the world’s wealthiest individuals and most prominent designers to a belief that people, in general, no matter how poor or apparently disadvantaged, are fully capable of making their way and that it is often the case that the interventions of well-intentioned persons bring both opportunity and harm to the lives of locals.